Jenay smiled too. “I have you as a husband,” she said. “What am I supposed to do?”
But that little line, although meant as a joke, caused Charles’s smile to disappear. “I owe you an apology, Jenay,” he said.
Jenay stared at him. She didn’t ask for what. She knew what for.
“I didn’t go into details about her after that banquet, but it wasn’t because she meant something to me. She didn’t. That wasn’t why I didn’t want to discuss her.”
“Then why didn’t you if that wasn’t the reason?” she asked him.
There was a momentary hesitation with Charles, but then he continued. “I didn’t want you to know what kind of man I really am.”
But his reason concerned her. “What kind of man you really are, or were?” she asked, and then stared at him. His response was everything!
“What kind of man I used to be,” Charles corrected himself. “I’m not that horny-ass man who could never get satisfied anymore.”
Jenay smiled. That was more like it! “But why aren’t you that way anymore?” she asked. “Because I satisfy you?”
Charles stared into her eyes. And he wasn’t smiling at all. “Oh, baby,” he said, “you do so much more than that. You ground me. You complete me. You make me feel as if I’m that perfect man you put me out to be. I’m not. No way. But you make me feel that way.” He kissed her. “You make me feel that way,” he said again. But this time he said it breathlessly, as if his arousal was catching up to his erection and he was soon going to have to make their lovemaking their focus.
Jenay was already doing that. Charles might not have realized in that moment, but he had been pushing into her faster and faster and deeper and deeper to a point where he was almost pounding her.
And when he realized it, too, his strokes increased even more. And soon he was slapping into Jenay. He was letting it all hang out. He held her with a big bear hug tightness that matched the tightness his dick felt inside of her.
He kept fucking her. He kept increasing his strokes and pounding her. And soon that relaxed peacefulness they had come upstairs to pursue, was a figment of their imagination. There was nothing relaxed, and nothing peaceful about the way Charles was handling her. This wasn’t that kind of fuck anymore. It was now more sensual. More intense. More desperate!
But Charles couldn’t slow down. It felt too good to him. And by the way Jenay was groaning and grunting too, it felt too good to her.
They continued to make love at that dizzying pace they both enjoyed, and they continued to hold onto each other with tighter and tighter grips. Their sweat was intermingling. Their breathing was equal parts erratic and tortured. It was like a locomotive moving down the tracks at such a fast clip that it felt as if, at any moment, it could lose total control. That was how they felt. They were not only continually on the verge of cumming, but on the verge of losing all control too. Their love was driving their train.
Jenay held on for dear life as Charles fucked her. He wasn’t trying to be coy. He wasn’t trying to be gentlemanly. He was trying to fuck her dry. He was trying to get her to a place where his release would be like water to a desert: everything.
And when they came, they came so closely one behind the other that they couldn’t say who went first at all. In their bodies, they came together. They were nearly empty of all strength when they came, but Charles’s pour-in filled them back up.
They were filled and depleted at the same time.
Four hours later, as they laid arm in arm, both on their backs in a faraway sleep, knocks were heard on their bedroom door. It took more knocks, and then more knocks still before Charles finally woke up, and Jenay began to stir.
“Yep?” Charles said in a voice that anybody listening would know was that after-sex, hoarse-sounding voice.
“It’s time to get ready, Charles.” It was Mick.
Jenay, who had her arm around him, held him tighter.
“I’ll be down,” Charles responded, and they could hear Mick walk away.
But Jenay wouldn’t let him go.
He patted her hand, and he looked into her eyes. “I’ll be alright, babe,” he said. “Why are you worrying like this?”
Jenay didn’t know.
She couldn’t even begin to tell him why.
And that was what was worrying her most.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the time Mick and Charles arrived at the old papermill on the outskirts of Westbrook, Maine, Targe Montalis was already waiting. He sat on the hood of an old car with a cigarette between his fingers. He was already there. But so were Mick’s men: hidden in the surrounding woods; but close enough should shit happen, while others were inside the dilapidated warehouse on the property: even closer.
“Stop here,” Charles said. “Let’s see that fucker sweat.”
Mick, the driver, smiled. “You mean like that sweat you and Jenay had going on?”
Charles looked at Mick as he stopped their car some fifty feet from Targe’s car. There was no way he knew what they were doing in that bedroom. They had finished hours before he knocked on their door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Mick smiled. “We were still on the patio. Bonita had gone inside to grab something or other, but she ran back out. ‘There’s a lot of noise upstairs, Uncle Mick,’ she said. ‘I think Mommy and Daddy might be in trouble.’”
He grinned. He couldn’t keep a straight face. “So quite naturally we all jumped up and ran inside. Tony grabbed Nita and kept her outside. But when we got in there, and we heard just what kind of noise Neet was talking about, we laughed. Oh man did we laugh!”
Charles frowned. “Fuck y’all,” he said.
“I mean bedsprings popping, and the sound of the bed itself bouncing like it was bouncing away, and all of those grunts and groans.”
“And that’s funny to you?”
“When there is nothing to laugh about, and then something happens like that? Yes. Hilarious. We couldn’t stop laughing.” Mick laughed.
“Okay, you had your laugh,” Charles said. “Now can we get back to the matter at hand?”
“Shit yeah,” Mick said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “But you’re the one who asked. I was just telling your ass.”
Charles double-checked the magnum he carried with him, put it back up, and then he and Mick got out of the car.
Targe slid off of his car’s hood and began walking toward them as they walked toward him. They met up halfway. Charles went in front. Mick, looking around, kept slightly back.
“You wanted a meeting,” Charles said to Targe. “We’re here.”
“Thanks for coming, sir. But I feel I need to get some things off my chest, and to clear my name.”
Mick glanced at the lying fucker as he continued to look around. If he confessed to trying to kill Amelia, then he’d believe him.
“What do you want to say?” Charles asked.
“Hammer Reese made us turn on Amelia,” he said.
That got Mick’s attention. It was in line with what he’d been hearing.
Charles had heard it, too, but Targe didn’t know that. “Why would Hammer make you do a fool thing like that?” he asked.
Targe took another drag on his cigarette. “It’s complicated,” he said.
“Simplify it,” Charles said.
“The president wants to put Hammer up as his new CIA chief.”
“What about General Krane?” Charles asked. “He’s the CIA chief, and he hasn’t been there that long either.”
“Just seven months,” Targe said. “But POTUS wants him out, and he wants Hammer in.”
“Keep talking.”
“Hammer met with Dutch Harber, our former president, and he told him that in order for the president to make the announcement, he had to clean up his act.”
“Clean up his act?” Charles asked. “You mean Amelia?”
“I mean Amelia. And her drug cartel, yes. He had to clean that shit up. Only it wasn’t that simple
because Hammer was taking over her operation, and she didn’t even know it. Dutch Harber and President McKenzie didn’t either. But when the Feds got word that the operation wasn’t shut down the way it was supposed to be, they thought Amelia was still running it.”
“But she wasn’t.”
“No,” Targe said, “she wasn’t. Hammer was running that shit. He hired this hillbilly they call Bone Crush to sling the product, and Bone hired a bunch of crooks and cons to fill the orders. It was business as usual.”
“So what are you saying?” Charles asked. “You’re saying the government is behind Amelia’s disappearance? That they took her so Hammer wouldn’t embarrass the president?”
“They didn’t just take her. They tried to kill her. We tried to kill her.”
“On whose orders? Hammer’s?”
Targe nodded. “Yep.”
Charles was stunned. Although he didn’t show it, Mick was too.
But Charles still couldn’t wrap his brain around what he was hearing. “Why would Hammer want to kill the woman he claims to love?”
“Maybe he doesn’t love her? I don’t know! Maybe he loves power as CIA chief more? I couldn’t tell you.”
“But Hammer’s already running special ops out of the CIA. Why would he want to be Director again that bad?”
“I figure it’s not about Hammer wanting it. I think it’s because they have something on Hammer. He had to get rid of her, or they would get rid of him.”
Mick frowned. “Hold the fuck up! You just said they wanted Hammer in as director. Now you’re saying they would have iced him?”
“The president wanted him in as director. General Krane, the current director, wanted him to stay out. Krane wanted to stay in. It was competing interests. The CIA wanted Hammer out and wanted to keep Amelia in the drug business to see to it. But operatives in the White House, on the orders of the president, wanted Hammer in, and wanted Amelia out. They ordered Hammer himself to make it happen. And Hammer ordered us.”
It was a lot of craziness to digest. Charles looked back at Mick, to see if he was able to digest it better. But from the look on Mick’s face, Charles knew he wasn’t.
“Was my family involved in any of their schemes?” Charles asked.
“Oh, yeah. The FBI, working under the direction of the CIA, was scaring up recruits to keep the scheme going. First, they wanted Amelia’s niece, your daughter, to get raped. Just to get the negative publicity going surrounding Hammer. When that didn’t work, they tried something different. Then something different. Just to keep the pot stirred. They wanted Hammer too sullied to ever be nominated, let alone confirmed.”
“And the White House wanted Amelia dead, to release Hammer of any contact with her?”
Targe nodded. “Dead or disappeared, that’s right. Hammer ordered her death because they were using the same strongarm tactics on him. They have something on him, or it wouldn’t work.”
“Where’s Amelia?” Mick asked, and Charles looked hard at Targe.
“We took her to this place outside of Baltimore. A safe house Hammer owned. We kept her drugged up until he gave the order to take her out. But then something happened to him, and the order didn’t come.”
“Is she still there?” Charles asked.
“I don’t know. First chance I had to get away, I got away. When Hammer disappeared, I knew I was next. So I came this way. I figure, with Mick the Tick and you and the Gabrinis in her pocket, I might be able to bargain for my life. In exchange to showing you where you can find her.”
They heard the plane before they saw it. It sounded small and with a motor almost insufficient for flight. But when they saw it, they knew it wasn’t what it was purported to be. A crop duster. A small plane that sprayed the crops. Only there were no crops in that neck of the woods, and Charles and Mick knew it.
“Run for cover!” Charles yelled as he and Mick tried to double back toward their car, while Targe tried to make a run for his own car.
But bullets began flying almost immediately, and they mowed down Targe first. Mick’s men ran out of the woods, and out of the warehouse, and began firing up at the aircraft.
But the pilot was too good a flyer, and the shooter on board had too much firepower. He launched a rocket-propelled grenade that knocked out many of Mick’s men with one shot. Mick and Charles’s best bet was to jump in the car and try to drive and swerve their way out of the line of fire.
But the next grenade launch was meant for the two of them, but it blew up their car instead, throwing them backwards onto their butts.
But they got up and tried to reverse course. Their only option now was the warehouse. They ran as if they were running toward that structure. But Charles had a detour in mind. As soon as the shooter on the crop duster aimed at the warehouse, he grabbed Mick and, instead of running straight toward that warehouse, they ran at an angle toward the lake on the far side of the warehouse.
The warehouse exploded into shards of wood when the grenade was launched. Although the shooter had been fooled by Charles, he was not going to be outdone. He reloaded and set his sights on the two brothers as he aimed and was ready to shoot.
“Now!” Charles yelled and both brothers turned and began shooting up at the plane, causing the shooter to scramble and retreat further back into the plane.
They fired shot after shot, and then they ran. They knew they had to get to that lake or they were done for. The few men they still had left had bailed and ran into the woods to cover their own butts, which both brothers understood. But that didn’t help their cause.
Because the bullets returned. This time the shooter knew he didn’t have time to launch a grenade. He was going to shoot those fuckers down!
Charles could feel the bullets nipping at his shoes as he ran. Mick got to the lake first, and dived in, and Charles, just as a bullet landed right where he was standing, left his feet and dived at an even further distance away.
He dropped into that lake with a loud splash and went as far under water as he could go. Down and down he went, as the bullets continued to ricochet across the lake. The plane circled, and came back around, and the shooter fired more rounds of bullets into the water. The plane circled again, and Charles continued to hold his breath in anticipation of another round coming, but it didn’t come. And then he could hear the plane elevate, which meant take off.
He immediately began swimming upward, toward the surface, nearly passing out given the amount of time he had been underwater. When he got up top, he lifted his head with a jerk, and was finally above water.
And he finally exhaled.
He looked up, and saw the crop duster fade away, and then he looked around, for his brother. Where was Mick?
Panic began to surge through him when he didn’t see his brother, and he held his breath to go back under.
But just as he was about to go down, Mick came up like the phoenix he was. And was able to catch a breath too.
And both brothers knew, as they looked at each other and nodded at each other, that they had just caught a break too. A monumental break.
By the time they swam to shore and dragged themselves out of the water, two police cars from the local police department had arrived. The few men of Mick’s that had gotten away had called for help.
But the police were already on their way. A crop duster dropping bullets from the sky was news in Westbrook.
But as Charles and Mick sat on the edge of the water, and waited for the cops to walk over, they knew they had to elevate their game.
“Get Tommy Gabrini,” Charles said to Mick. “I don’t care if he is out of the country. Get his ass back in the country. He has the connections we need.” Then Charles frowned. “We need him.”
Mick nodded. “Will do, Boss,” he said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The water swept over Charles’s tired body in a roaring cascade, and he realized just how badly every muscle in his body ached. He was getting too old for this cloak and dagger bullshit. Running and j
umping and dodging bullets. If Tony and Robert, who were the most athletic of his children, experienced the kind of physical stress he experienced, even they would be pained. But if Targe Montalis was right about Hammer’s sudden disappearance from the scene, not to mention what went down at his estate, then Charles had to keep going. He had a score to settle. Several scores.
He turned off the tap and got out of the shower. He looked in the mirror as he dried off quickly. All the ladies around town loved to insist how he still had his great looks, but he wasn’t so sure. Whenever he looked in the mirror all he saw staring back was a hardened man with a face too grim to be thought attractive. But at least Jenay liked that face. And that, as far as that went, was all that mattered to Charles.
“The gang’s all here,” Jenay said to him when he walked out of the bathroom. She had already showered and was already dressed in her very elegant but very understated black pantsuit, with a peach-colored blouse underneath. All four of his sons were hovering around the room, and around Jenay, like it was Christmas morning. It wasn’t. Far from it. But that was how it felt to Charles.
Donald and Robert were lying across the bed, while Brent and Tony sat in chairs against the wall. Jenay sat on the edge of the bed.
“Where’s everybody else?” Charles asked as he made his way to his underwear drawer.
“Downstairs,” said Donald.
“And may I ask why you people aren’t down there too?” Charles opened the drawer.
“Because we wanted to see you off,” Robert said. “It’s not every day our parents get to visit the White House.”
“It not a state dinner, Bobby,” Jenay pointed out. “They aren’t exactly looking forward to our visit.”
“Right,” Charles said with a crooked smile as he pulled out a pair of boxer’s.
“But it’s still a big deal,” Robert said. “At least it is to me. Because one day, you and Ma will be visiting me. I’m going to occupy that office one of these days.”
“You as our president?” Donald had surprise and doubt in his voice. “Why you barely won mayor of Jericho! Now you’re talking about the presidency of the United States? Are you bonkers?”
Big Daddy Sinatra_Bringing Down the Hammer Page 13